Aert van der Neer Amsterdam circa 1603/4 - 1677

Gift to Eva Frolich for her confirmation from her father, 19 March 1961 (according to an old inscription on the reverse).  

According to Arnold Houbraken, Aert van der Neer spent his youth in the Arkel near modern day Gorkum, a town on a river the river Weal, east of Dordrecht. There he became a painter, possibly as a result of meeting the Camphuyzen brothers. Van der Neer's earliest known painting is a genre scene dated 1632, now in the Narodni Galerie, Prague, and the following year he executed a landscape that he signed jointly with Joachem Camphuyzen.¹ 

It is for his characteristic moonlit landscapes such as the present work that Van der Neer remains the most known today, and was much admired during his time and subsequent centuries. The earliest of the paintings of this genre dates from the the 1640s but he was to continue to paint them throughout his career, varying the townscapes, staffage and light effect accordingly. The present work can be dated to Van de Neer's maturity when he had moved away from the slightly archaic style of the Camphuyzen brothers and had established himself as one of the most important landscape painters of his age.  

1 With P. de Boer, Amsterdam